The invention concerns a facility for order-processing of products, particularly for order-processing of foodstuffs in rectangular packaging, comprising:
a goods entrance for transport pallets loaded with identical goods by the food product manufacturer;
a goods exit for transport containers that are ready to ship comprising various goods assembled for the order;
a storage area downstream of the goods entrance comprising racks for storing the loaded transport pallets; and,
an order-processing area comprising means for removing individual goods and/or containers and for combining them for the transport containers.
Warehouse order-processing technology is gaining importance in all fields of commerce and in particular in the wholesale foods industry. However, warehousing in its narrower sense (i.e., static storage of individual goods) is becoming less significant while the dynamic processes and especially turn-around handling of goods is gaining importance. The goal of modern warehousing is therefore to keep the retention time of the individual goods in the warehouse to a minimum and thus to keep to a minimum the amount of capital tied up in warehousing.
The semi-automated facilities used for order-processing in the foods industry are generally multi-story racks that constitute storage passages for the goods and that are arranged adjacent to and above each other. The floors of the passages thus formed are provided with roller conveyors made of freely rotatable rollers and are slightly inclined so that gravity causes the goods warehoused at the one end of the passage, the so-called stocking or loading side, to move along the roller conveyors to the other end of the passage, the removal or order-processing side. Placing the containers of goods into position on the stocking side is done manually in that the individual goods are removed from a pallet holding identical goods and placed into the assigned passage. In the foodstuffs industry, order-processing with such racks at the removal side is also performed manually.
In many cases, however, no roller conveyors at all are used for the transport pallets; the pallets are first put into temporary storage in multi-story racks, and the lower-most surface, which is the most easily accessed by workers, is used for the transport pallet for the order currently being processed. If this pallet is empty, a forklift that can drive in the passages between the racks replaces it with one of the full, in-stock pallets above the empty pallet. Also moving about in the same passage between the racks in which the forklifts move are the workers who assemble the orders, which leads to mutual obstruction and thus to less efficient order-processing.
Finally, also known are racks comprising a stocking side and an order-processing side in which computer-controlled removal devices in the form of conveyors can be driven in a passage arranged on the order-processing side of the racks. Corresponding to the order, the conveyors take the product containers maintained in-stock in the passages running transversely and assemble the order. The conveyors used for this can be driven over corresponding guides in two coordinates so that each conveyor can access individually each of the passages arranged adjacent to and above each other. The distances covered by the conveyors are very long, however, which is why such an order-processing facility is not suitable for rapidly filling a plurality of different containers and thus is not suitable for achieving high rates of turn-around. However, turn-around rates in the foodstuffs industry are particularly high, and this with a generally high number of different containers per order.
The object of the invention is to create a facility for order-processing of products with which facility high rates of turn-around can be achieved with low space requirements when the orders processed regularly comprise a plurality of different goods and/or containers.
Suggested as a solution in a facility for order-processing of the type cited in the foregoing is that the path of the flow of goods between goods entrance and goods exit follows an inbound segment (W1) and an outbound segment (W2) parallel thereto in a xe2x80x9cUxe2x80x9d shape, the free ends of the inbound and outbound segments comprising the goods entrance and exit, and the storage area being situated on the inbound segment and the order-processing area being situated solely on the outbound segment.
An essential element of the invention is that the flow of goods from the goods entrance to the exit essentially follows a xe2x80x9cUxe2x80x9d-shaped path comprising parallel inbound and outbound segments. The essential advantage of such a basic layout for the facility is that the mutual consequences and obstacles caused by the flow of goods due to intersecting flows can be avoided, this achieving very high efficiency in terms of product turn-around and associated with low space requirements. Furthermore, for achieving uniform utilization of the surfaces available, it is important that the storage area is divided on the one hand and that the order-processing area separated therefrom is divided on the other hand. The invention suggests that the storage area be situated on the inbound segment of the U-shaped flow of goods and that the order-processing area be situated solely on the outbound segment. This means that if transport pallets coming from the manufacturer are stored temporarily on the inbound segment, subsequent order-processing occurs in a flow that is essentially directionally opposed thereto, i.e., on its outbound segment, given a path of flow that is essentially U-shaped. This type of flow requires a xe2x80x9cturning pointxe2x80x9d at which the inbound segment transitions to the outbound segment. For the invention it is important that this turning point is reached prior to the goods reaching order-processing storage, where they are automatically assembled for the required orders.
The transport pallets that are each loaded with identical goods by the manufacturer are situated solely in the storage area, while the goods and/or containers in the order-processing area have already been separated so that they can be processedxe2x80x94fully automaticallyxe2x80x94to assemble orders, also in the order-processing area. This facilitates high turn-around rates even when the orders processed comprise a plurality of different products and product containers, as is frequently the case in the foodstuffs industry.
The products and containers on the transport pallets must be separated between the storage area, in which the transport pallets are still loaded with uniform goods, and the order-processing area. One layout suggests a depalletizing station for unloading the transport pallets removed from the storage area, this depalletizing station being arranged in the flow of goods between the storage area and the order-processing area.
In order to obtain optimal utilization of available space, the depalletizing station can be arranged jointly with the order-processing area on the outbound segment of the U-shaped path of the flow of goods. In this case the storage area is situated on the inbound segment, while depalletizing station and order-processing area together define the outbound segment of the flow of goods that in its entirety comprises a U-shape.
Suggested for transporting the goods containers from the depalletizing station to the order-processing area is a conveyor embodied as a roller conveyor over at least a portion of its length, one section of which extends along the order-processing area.
In a preferred embodiment it is furthermore suggested that the order-processing area comprises:
an order-processing storage area that comprises a plurality of parallel passages for processing the ordered goods, each passage containing only identical goods;
a loading area at one end of the passages comprising means for stocking new goods in the assigned passages; and,
removal apparatuses at the other end of the passages for computer-controlled transport of individual goods out of the passages to downstream conveyors,
wherein each passage is provided a discrete removal apparatus that is actuatable independent of the other removal apparatuses. An order-processing area designed in this manner can achieve very high rates of turn-around because each individual passage is provided a discrete removal apparatus that is actuatable computer-controlled independent of the other removal apparatuses. A very high rate of turn-around is achieved that at full capacity would make it possible to remove goods from all of the passages simultaneously and process them to fill an order.
The invention furthermore suggests that the means for stocking new goods in the passages cooperates with the section of conveyor that leads from the depalletizing station to the order-processing area.
The means for stocking new goods in a passage is preferably a cross-conveyor that travels toward the passage.
The containers removed from the passages when an order is being processed are preferably transported via a continuously driven conveyor that extends along the removal apparatuses and perpendicular to the passages.
In a preferred embodiment it is furthermore suggested that the passages are roller conveyors that incline away toward the removal apparatuses and that extend perpendicular to the outbound segment of the flow of goods.
Finally, the invention suggests that the conveyor for the removed goods leads to at least one long packing table that extends perpendicular to the outbound segment of the flow of goods.